“I have been upgrading the VOACAP Point-to-Point service with grayline-related calculations as we all know that VOACAP is not doing so great with long-distance low-band propagation predictions. So, to help the low-band enthusiasts, I created the “All-year Grayline” service which calculates the most important grayline-related times (in UTC) for the chosen path – for every day of the year. The results will be displayed on a separate page with some evaluation for times which could provide enhanced signal levels. There are three color codes to mark the “enhanced” time periods: green, blue and red.

Also, to visualize better what’s going on with the day and night, each day of the year (in the DATE column) is a hyper-link, and when clicked, another tab will open a Google Map, displaying the TX and RX, a red great-circle line (via short-path) and a small red circle which shows the geographical midpoint between TX and RX. The top of the page shows a number of clickable time boxes (the times which were calculated on the previous page), and when you do click them, the terminator line will be set accordingly on the map. The time boxes provide a tooltip when you hover the mouse over them, explaining the time in question. ”

If you wish to do some serious pre-contest propagation planning for the
upcoming contest (or any contest/DXpedition), you might be interested to
know that I have expanded my VOACAP Propagation Planner site atwww.voacap.com/planner.html .

Besides running batch predictions from one TX site to all CQ Zones, it’s now
possible also to run batch predictions to almost all ITU Zones (short path &
long path) as well. There is a separate analysis tool (for Windows & Mac) as
well as Excel Workbooks available to massage the raw prediction data into a
more readable form.

You can choose from a wealth of TX/RX antennas for each band as well as play
with powers, various sunspot numbers and set the Es layer parameter on and
off.

Currently, more than 110 locations covering most of the ITU Zones are
included.

The Propagation Planner gives you a good start for planning your operating
strategy, especially if you run the predictions for two different sunspot
numbers (SSN): 70 (predicted for July) and 140 (…or even higher for high
solar activity). For low bands, use the W6ELProp software or use grayline
maps (such as DX Atlas by Alex VE3NEA) for planning the best operating
times. Do NOT rely too heavily on VOACAP on low bands!

For those who want to give it a try at WRTC, use the following coordinates
for the TX site: 42.29N (Latitude: 42.29), 71.57W (Longitude: -71.57).